Ohio's unemployment rate fell to 7% in September, but the numbers are better than that in Cuyahoga County and all six of its contiguous counties.

County data produced by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services show the September jobless rate in the Cleveland-Akron area ranges from 5.2% (Geauga County) to 6.9% (Cuyahoga County).

The unemployment rate for other Cleveland-Akron area counties are as follows: Medina, 5.4%; Lake, 5.7%; Portage, 5.9%; Summit, 6.2%; and Lorain, 6.8%.

About half of Ohio's counties now have unemployment rates below 6%, the state data show.

Among the state's 88 counties, the September 2012 unemployment rates ranged from a low of 3.9% in Mercer County to a high of 11.5% in Pike County.

Rates decreased in 78 of the 88 counties.

In case you wonder why your raise is so small ...

A USA Todayanalysis finds that employer-paid benefits “accounted for a record 19.7% of worker compensation last year, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis' personal income data.” That's up from 16.6% in 2000 and less than 10% in the 1960s.

The shift to paying workers in benefits — rather than cash — “has accelerated in the past decade, especially since the economic downturn hit in 2007,” the newspaper reports. Employers “slammed the brakes on wage hikes while protecting popular benefits such as medical insurance, government data show.”

USA Today found that benefits climbed $1,302 per full-time worker from 2007 to 2011, or 10.8%, after adjusting for inflation, according to BEA data. Wages grew just $777 over those four years, a 1.4% increase.

“Wages are heavily taxed, for both employees and employers, while benefits are not,” USA Today notes. “Workers prize good benefits but often don't understand their financial cost, Hallock says. A pay raise is easily visible. A benefit increase is not — and may even feel like a pay cut. When health premiums go up $100 a month, the worker may pay $25 more and suffer a drop in take-home pay. The $75-a-month benefit increase is invisible.”

Access doesn't change; costs do

Maybe business isn't so hostile to Obamacare after all.

Forbes.com reports that a new study of small, midsize and large employers shows “there is little indication that employers plan to drop health care coverage.”

The study was conducted by the Midwest Business Group on Health. The online survey, which was conducted this summer and released Tuesday, had more than 110 respondents that ranged in size from companies with more than 5,000 employees, to midsize companies with 1,001 to 5,000 workers and smaller companies with fewer than 1,000 workers. (A summary of the findings is here.)

“Employers still believe that health benefits are vital to attract talented employees and maintain a productive workforce,” said Scott Thompson, president of the health care practice of The Benfield Group, a market research and strategy firm that collaborated with the Midwest Business Group on the study. “This research found that most employers, especially those with more than 200 employees, will not drop employee benefit coverage in the foreseeable future.”

Employers plan to keep benefits, but costs likely will rise for workers.

“While 57 percent of employers today that responded offer consumer-directed health plans that work with health savings accounts or health reimbursement accounts, that percentage will rise to 62 percent of employers in 2013 and continue to rise steadily to 71 percent through 2018,” according to Forbes.com.